The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg records this week’s Ruminant days before his excursion to the woods (Bigfoot sighting anyone?), to discuss international law, hubris, whatever the mess is with the Iran war, and “common good” conservatism. And he answers questions from listeners.

Show Notes:

—How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran

—Aaron MacLean Remnant

—Aaron MacLean and Mark Montgomery on School of War

—The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought

—Yuval Levin Remnant

—The Neutrality Myth: Liberty, Order, and the Common Good

—Jonah’s X thread on the DSA

Send your questions to remnant@thedispatch.com.

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
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Bleary-eyed, scrambled, and in need of a second overpriced venti black coffee, Jonah Goldberg speaks with Brendan Simms, a Cambridge Don-guy who wears fancy belts, about his new book, Return of the Great Powers, which discusses how the Russia-Ukraine war sparked how the Russia-Ukraine War prompted the West to act, China’s potential defeat if Russia loses, Trump as a mob boss, and technology as a driver of cultural change.

Show Notes:

—Brendan Simms: Return of the Great Powers

—Brendan Simms: Donald Trump: The Making of a Worldview

—Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man

—Simms’ About Page

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
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Detractors frequently accuse Jonah Goldberg of being an irrelevant dinosaur. We at The Remnant are proud to say that only one of those accusations is correct. We are also proud to say that Jonah’s dinosaurness does not prevent him from conversing with young, hip, and cool members of today’s media landscape. “Prove it,” you say? Well, today we bring you a podcast with none other than Jerusalem Demsas, founder of The Argument and one of the coolest center-left pundits. Join Jonah and Jerusalem as they dive into positive and negative freedoms, the college landscape, the Democratic Socialists of America, Zohran Mamdani’s policies, the Democratic Party, housing, playing the long game, the battle of ideas, our broken epistemic environment, weak political parties, oligarchy, money in politics, groupthink, and technology.

Show Notes:

—The Argument

—“‘Feel’ as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather”

—Demsas: “Does the oligarchy exist?”

—The Argument Podcast: What AOC and Bernie Sanders get wrong about the oligarchy

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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As DSA and postliberal pirates storm the decks of the HMS Remnant, Captain Jonah Goldberg would seem to be in dire straits. Nonetheless, Captain Jonah—with an eerie air of calm—draws his cutlass, sets down his cigar, and smiles. Prepare, gentle listener, for a bloodbath. Today Jonah deftly handles every controversy on the docket, including Hasan Piker, Ukraine as Israel, the Michigan Senate race, Anthony Fauci, Covid in retrospective, rap music, Napoleon III, J.D. Vance, the common good, subsidiarity, the Constitution, and Hamas.

Show Notes:

—Hasan Piker collar video

—Last week’s Ruminant

—Friday’s DisPod

—Rebecca Heinrichs Remnant

—Aaron MacLean Remnant

—Grayson Logue in The Dispatch - “Why We Can’t Move On From the Pandemic”

—Matt Ridley Remnant

—Matt Ridley’s book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19

—John Barry - The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

—Jonah’s book Liberal Fascism

—The Argument

—NYT Heritage Foundation piece

—JD Vance’s book

—Justice Scalia’s Congressional testimony

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Every once in a while, The Remnant staff need to remind Jonah Goldberg that we’re running a business here, and that he can’t just putz around with Pod, Chris, or Sarah on every episode. Sometimes, you need someone respectable; sometimes, you need an expert. Today’s guest—the expert to rule them all—is Ken Pollack, here to tell us all about the war in Iran. Join Jonah and Ken as they discuss pain thresholds, public opinion inside Iran, the fallout of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, the ideology of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Persian nationalism, the original sins of the war, the politics behind the scenes, civil-war spillover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, oil, exit strategies, and end games.

Show Notes:

—Pollack’s forthcoming book: The Iraq Wars

—Last Ken Pollack Remnant

—Aaron MacLean Remnant

—NYT: “Inside Israel’s Secret Operation to Cultivate Ahmadinejad”

—Pollack’s webinar: “US Policy After Iraq: Getting Lebanon’s Disarmament Right”

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.



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